Coping On Campus

Today's undergrads appear to have it easy. Many parents pay for
tuition. Meals are served with a swipe of an i.d. card. Colleges
typically offer everything from swimming pools to high-speed internet
access in the dorms.

But college students can get stressed
out, and "the Class of 2005 Project," a study by Associate Professor of
Psychology and Education George Bonanno, aims to learn why.

The
study, which is following about 140 Columbia University undergraduates
over four years, looks at both chronic and acute stress-related events,
including financial difficulties, death of a loved one, physical
assault, and a serious relationship conflict or a break-up. Students go
online and check off which events they have experienced that week. Then
they rate the events for stressfulness and significance. Bonanno hopes
to find out which students are coping well, which ones aren't and why.

In
an article in Psychological Science in which he discussed preliminary
results of the study, Bonanno challenged the assumption that expressing
emotion is always a healthy response to stress or trauma. "The
healthiest thing is being able to suppress or express emotion as needed
by the situation," he wrote. Students who demonstrated this kind of
flexibility showed the best adjustment to college two years after
enrollment.